Al Jazeera Debates The Winds Of Change In The Arab World

Doha, Qatar: When I arrived in the capital of Qatar as one of the guest participants in the 6th annual Al Jazeera Forum focused on the Arab world in transition, it was clear the mood had changed.

In years past, the humiliation and oppression of the region was driving the discourse, but this year, events had taken a positive turn with popular youth revolutions catapulting the Al Jazeera TV networks into the global spotlight with governments falling and a new future emerging.

A revolt in Libya was topping the news, being described as civil war—whether it is or isn’t—with Western intervention in the form of a no fly zone on the horizon to either protect that country’s people from a mad dictator, or in Col. Gadaffi’s view, use humanitarianism as a cover for an armed effort by foreign interests to seize the country’s oil wealth.

Just as the Forum begun, we learned that an Al Jazeera cameraman, Hassan Al Jaber, who I met at an earlier Forum, was killed in Libya, likely a targeted killing because the Al Jazeera people I met believe Gadaffi put money on their heads.

Soon, the story I came to discuss also lost its standing at the top of the media agenda. The disaster in the Far East had displaced the crisis in the Middle East.

News waits for no man or TV network , so within a few hours, as fate would have it, the natural calamity in Japan riveted the world.

Even Al Jazeera was leading with it, with some excellent reporting from the scene. The channel also tapped some of the images and analysis on Japan’s NHK which offered a round the clock funereal telethon of a region dying along with it so many of its people. It was as gripping as it was so unbearably sad

A natural earthquake and tsunami had displaced a man made one We clearly need to know more about Japan’s nuclear plants. especially since the Obama Administration was planning to shovel billions to the same company whose plants are exploding and melting down.

The sounds of freedom in Tahrir Square had become yesterday’s story even though that revolution is unfinished and demands follow-up. When the cameras go, public awareness often goes with them.

There have been rising death counts in the battles in Bahrain, Yemen, and Libya Now Syria has seen protests and even Qatar is bracing for a “day of rage.”

Political disruptions pale in importance as the world’s attention is mesmerized by the dreadful sights of villages and peoples being destroyed by a crush of water and moving earth. Exploding nuclear plants gave us all something new to worry about just before Hollywood releases a new wave of terrifying disaster movies. Apocalyptic fiction can never keep up with harder to comprehend “faction.”

Back at the opulent Sheraton Hotel in Doha, ironically and perhaps prophetically designed to look like a pyramid, the young bloggers and activists who came to tell their story seemed a bit out of place. Sleeping in a posh hotel certainly beats sleeping in the streets, but the setting added to the surrealistic spectacle of a people oriented gathering held where the elite meet to eat.

On the other hand, why not some luxury for these media warriors? Why shouldn’t some of the kazillions earned in Qatar from fueling the cars of the west go into funding Middle East movements for justice?

The Gulf States can afford to pay back (or forward) —and should, even as their rulers of Saudia Arabia and The Emerites have invaded Bahrain to try to contain protests that could come their way.

The theme of the event was “winds of change,” a term that first gained currency about the fight against apartheid.

“The success or failure of these political transformations will determine the future of the entire region,” Al Jazeera’s program reads.

“What are the odds that these uprisings will give rise to a new political order, given the forces of the old regimes and external forces exerting pressure to retain crucial levels of control?”

Two days of panels explored these issues in the context of social justice, democracy, transparency, global politics and more local concerns. As someone who focuses on media as politics, I didn’t have far to look for a media angle.

This revolution itself is amplified by media. It is promoted, in part, by new social media and publicized in “old” media. The blogs, the cellphones, Facebook and Twitter are all part of it.

Yes, this revolution is also being televised as the ultimate state of the art multi-media experience.

The Al Jazeera anchorwoman who opened the Forum made clear that social media and TV media can work together—and does. It converges as much as diverges; it builds a cumulative impact reinforcing each other, but it is the people who stood up to resolve their grievances who made it happen, they deserve the credit.

Yes, the mediagenic images and interactive energy has an appeal for a media savvy, web-focused generation that doesn’t just watch someone else’s tubes but wants to shape their own.

Al Jazeera was, nevertheless, at its center, providing visibility and legitimacy. It is no longer a small alternative outlet, even though most Americans don’t know that because the world’s most important network is barely available in a land that touts its “free” media.

Denigrated by politicians and shunned by nervous cable outlets, Al Jazeera is still fighting for airtime in the USA even as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton now praises it as “must watch, real journalism.” (Her remarks, of course, served a promotional agenda since they were uttered at a hearing seeking funding for a government propaganda outlets.) Even she is using Al Jazeera’s popularity to better fund networks that she hopes can compete with it.

Started in 1996 out of a failed BBC experiment, it has grown into a multi-channel mega network with documentary and sports outlets and news channels in Arabic, English Turkish, Balkan languages and Swahili, so far.

It has a study center, a training center and offers a range of social media platforms. Its web sites are big and getting bigger.

• Al Jazeera Network has more than 65 bureaus across the globe – the majority are rooted in the global South.

• Al Jazeera Network has more than 3,000 staff members across the world, including more than 400 journalists from more than 60 countries.

• Al Jazeera English has more than 1,000 highly experienced staff from more than 50 nationalities, making AJE’s newsroom among the most diverse in the world.

I was told that a recent commentary of mine about Bernie Madoff on AlJazeera.net drew a whopping 238,000 page views worldwide.

One of the panels here was focused on discussing how what was once called the “CNN effect” has been displaced by the “Al Jazeera effect.” The former was about a cable network that won influence with the men at the top; the latter is about winning credibility and respect from people at the bottom.

I heard a term there on the lips of an Al Jazeera executive that I never uttered by any American media exec in my years of media watching and working at ABC, CNN, and CNBC among others. The term is “oppression”—as in being a voice for the voiceless, standing up for oppressed people.

Al Jazeera explicitly links its media efforts to the fight for democracy and free speech.

CNN, these days, like Fox and MSNBC, is more about supercharged domistic partisan opinion. Al Jazeera is more about universal human rights, facts and journalism, although when it does offer opinions it always offers more than one.

Its slogan has always been, “the opinion and the other opinion.”

Al Jazeera credits its success to being a trusted and vital source of information. It does real reporting and its own investigations.

Their multi-ethnic army of global correspondents comes from the world’s leading media outlets while it also taps diverse freelancers. It can compete with and often out scoop BBC and CNN because top staffers once worked for those outlets and know how to do it.

And it has no sacred cows. Its “Palestinian Papers” exposed the Palestinian Authority’s complicity with Israel in negotiations. The PA is now among the channel’s detractors even as the audience in the region was glued to its embarrassing findings.

Some of the panels seemed uneven with a predictable discourse but speeches by Turkey’s Foreign Minister and Brazil’s ex President Lula livened it up.

The Al Jazeera Forum asks: “has the future arrived”?

The answer is a qualified yes but not as an end point. Most of the delegates seem to agree, change is a process, and it is underway One speaker compared the recent uprisings to the events of l968 which I played a small role in.

The future is always arriving, and whatever happens, will continue to do so as long as the sun rises in the morning.